Elenowen

Joseph Lemay

Watch & Listen

Elenowen

There's something so freeing about letting go of others' expectations to press on in a direction of your own choosing. Elenowen, husband and wife singer/songwriters Josh and Nicole Johnson, have lit upon their common voice after, roads traveled, trials overcome and years lived. Resonating within themes of finding themselves in each other and the infinite possibilities of what's ahead, Elenowen's sophomore full-length For the Taking is a collection of modern songs keeping an indie tradition alive.

Those familiar with Elenowen's appearance on the inaugural season of NBC's The Voice, their debut album, Pulling Back the Veil or their follow-up singles and EP, will recognize their characteristic tender melodies, lyrical motifs and incandescent acoustic work. But there's something new and exciting in this assortment of songs found on For the Taking, produced by Music City staples Jeremy Bose and Trent Dabbs. Perhaps it's a result of the overwhelming fan support they received by funding the album with Kickstarter, which served to reassure the young duo about their place in the world. Of their freshly realized niche, Nicole says, "We've been doing this for a long time, but it feels like we're newborns, starting all over again."

"We're basically starting from scratch," Josh agrees. "In a way, this record feels a lot like our first one. The whole tone and the way we're going about this album are synonymous with our debut. It's back to just us."

Joseph Lemay

Before patching up the old trailer in West Tennessee, grass grew through cracks on the floor and copperheads mingled between decades of stacked boxes on a grandfather’s hand-me-down farm. It was in this abandoned singlewide that songwriter Joseph LeMay cleared a space for his new life as a married man and Seventeen Acres, his first full-length release.
LeMay began performing at an age when most kids are focused on learning the alphabet. Just barely a teen, the young musician could add Showtime at the Apollo, an opening gig for Brian Wilson and a countless line of county fairs across the southeast to his list of growing accomplishments. This passion for music continued to manifest during high school as LeMay took to writing and moved to New York in search of work as a performer.
During his time in Manhattan, LeMay’s musical future bent when he met music veteran Charlie Peacock, producer of The Civil Wars and The Lone Bellow. LeMay moved to Nashville and spent hours as a silent observer of Peacock as artists passed through his studio. Witnessing the life of a working musician changed LeMay, inspiring him to find his voice.
But it wasn’t long before LeMay found himself in an age-old Nashville ritual- working a part-time job to pay the bills and creating on the side. “After making sandwiches for 60 hours a week, it’s hard to find the energy and time to do the work you want,” says LeMay. To escape the inevitable pace their life was heading, LeMay and his new wife made a drastic change of scenery and moved into that forgotten trailer on her family’s inherited farm on the outskirts of Dyersburg, Tenn.
“It’s like sitting under a magnifying glass,” says LeMay of the isolation of rural Tennessee. “Writing this record, I was constantly alone and in a period of self-doubt. I was worried I wouldn’t measure up as a new husband and as a songwriter, more or less thrown out in the wilderness.” The intensity of his self-examination led to what we now know as Seventeen Acres.
Filled with stories of dissecting the nuances of love and uncertainty, Seventeen Acres was produced by LeMay himself and came to life in the same space the stories originated. Songs like “Fruit on the Vine” and “Warrant for My Worry” ache with missed expectations and hope in their draught, while “Molly My Girl” and “Just So” are timeless tales of endearing love. Start to finish, LeMay’s labor is driven by this love and all the desperation, fear and commitment that comes with it.
“Music fulfills a need,” says LeMay. “It’s communicating across mediums. We don’t just want words. It’s the color and the canvas. The cadence and the lyric.” It’s with a balanced grasp of bare truth and pursuit of grace that LeMay channels this primal need in the desolation of his Seventeen Acres.